syntax error?why?

[Steve Holden]

Robert L Hicks wrote:
> 
> I don't think this is a bug. It caught the error. Sure it should be more
> informational but that doesn't classify it as a bug.
> 
What, you'd classify it as a feature?

> > From: Michael Hudson <mwh21 at cam.ac.uk>
> > Organization: University of Cambridge, England
> > Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
> > Date: 03 Nov 2000 19:04:56 +0000
> > Subject: Re: syntax error?why?
> >
> > "Alex Martelli" <aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> >> Therefore, this must count as a bug of the Python
> >> compiler -- it displays insufficient information
> >> on these kinds of syntax errors (showing a couple
> >> of extra previous lines would help, as would having
> >> a message a TAD more informative than 'invalid
> >> syntax'!-).  Quite unfriendly, especially to
> >> beginning users of Python...
> >
> > Python 2 is much better here (praise be to Ping!).  Of course I can't
> > tell you whether it would be in this situation...
> >
> > Cheers,
> > M.
> >
> > --
> > If you give someone Fortran, he has Fortran.
> > If you give someone Lisp, he has any language he pleases.
> > -- Guy L. Steele Jr, quoted by David Rush in comp.lang.scheme.scsh

While "bug" is sometimes used in a perjorative context, many use it to
refer to "anything which needs fixing".  1.5.2 was pretty unfriendly about
certain types of syntax errors (especially the ones it just reported as
"syntax error"...) but given it's now obsolescent I wound't give much
for the chances of this particular problem being retroactively fixed.

It's just too expensive to fire up the time machine.

regards
 Steve
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